At least we got the lawn terrace seeded this fall, The other four terraces have baby fruit trees espaliered up against the wall on the top two terraces and not much else. We hauled *tons* of leaves for mulch and we're still not done.

This post was edited by pugetsoundgardener on Wed, Jan 28, 15 at 16:44

I'm trying to lasagna garden the weeds away on this section. You can see the tiny patch of leaves at the bottom which is as far as I've gotten. The end of the vegetable garden terrace is past the steps.

So much naked soil... The trunks are my rhododendron forest. The sword ferns are all I managed to save underneath them.

And this. Don't talk to me about this. This is a 45 degree slope at the end of my terraces, pure clay, soggy in winter and rock hard in summer. There are actually 30 little azaleas that I just planted in there which you can barely spot, plus the baby hedge I planted last summer up against the fence. I'm going to have to infill this with tons of annuals until the azaleas reach full size. I hope my seeds all sprout!

I don't want to discourage your sowing, I have some wintersown noble fir that have done well now transplanted at our family farm...(we don't live there, its a nephew in DH's old family home)

But could I also give you a heads up on the annual sale from one of our major timber companies....I'm going to the Rochester event myself. I have a slope facing in the opposite direction as yours, down and away from the house on the back of my property and could use another dozen conifers or so for long term stabilizing there. The trees are normally well grown, larger root masses, species can vary from year to year but there should be choices of several. Some are three years old and 24"+ in size, and you'd want to get those (any of them really) in the ground quickly so area somewhat prepared. They don't always respond as well to potting up and holding has been my experience. Somewhere in the neighborhood of $1/tree, less if you were to want a full bag of the same thing.

You said you needed 50. A few larger to interplant with your own seedlings might speed up your stabilizing even if you did not buy 50 young trees ;) If you were free that day. Rochester is approx. 25 minutes south of Olympia.

Here is a link that might be useful: Annual Seedling Sale

Wow, $1 a tree is fantastic! The best I found was $3.50 a tree online, and those were 12" tall. I do need Western Red Cedar (my arborist had me take out the redwood volunteers as not stable enough on my steep wet slope). And Rochester isn't close. But it's something to think about! The big expense is the deer tubes and the stakes, though. The trees are pretty cheap compared with that. And without deer tubes I'm just planting deer snacks around here.

Oh, I see now, you are island living. I'm about an hour W of Rochester.

Me too....meaning the deer and we aren't even rural, are within city limits. I just got home from an errand and waited on 4 to leave my driveway on my way out, I can resent them but still don't want them to run into the street and traffic.

You garden will be very pretty when you've had some more time to work on it, I think will be worth the effort. Your view is to die for.

Thanks! We pretty much purchased the view and the bones of the house. The property had been very nearly abandoned for 15 or 20 years, so it was completely overgrown, mainly with listed invasives. And the 1902 house is just a series of money eating projects. But you can't argue with be view or the privacy!

Very pretty property and love the dogs.

Pugetsoundgardener, I thought I'd put in a plug for the Pierce Conservation District yearly sale, you can get quite a lot of native shrubs and trees for not a lot of money, less than what you'd spend at a nursery. My first year here I bought red osier dogwood, native ninebark, red flowering currant, oceanspray, Mahonia, and others at this sale and at the one for King County. They have trees too.

Here is a link that might be useful: Pierce Conservation District Sale

Here's a link to the King County sale.

Here is a link that might be useful: King County

You guys jogged my memory - there's actually a local native plant sale. Just in time, too, because tomorrow is the last day to buy plants. There's a gigantic four hour window next Saturday to pick the plants up. Gotta love these little islands, eh? But the prices are fantastic, and there's no long drive attached, so I'll take it. :)

Here is a link that might be useful: Vashon/Maury Land Trust plant sale

I see they have your Western Cedar ;) And I'm wondering how deer do with the taller mahonia....

It's really too far for me for a few natives. I did take a quick but interesting nursery day there a few years back. DH was going to a family golf tournament that I wasn't interested in and dropped him, drove over and caught the ferry, stopped in a few places browsing while carefully watching my watch and scurried back to the ferry dock so I wouldn't be late for the after golf dinner.

My mother owned a house on Anderson Island for a while and I never did quite get the hang of a boat dictating my schedule ;) I love water, boats, islands but so appreciate the convenience of a bridge too....

I should point out that I'm not winter sowing for that back woodland area this year. I'm actually wintersowing edibles and flowers for my front garden - mostly edibles for the terraces and a herbaceous border for the side slopes. Growing plants from seed for my 1/4 acre front garden seemed ambitious enough for the first year...

I have coughed up cash for foundation shrubs and trees, particularly ones necessary for privacy and to stabilize steep slopes and pull water out of wet areas. I picked up 10 Western Red Cedars and 10 Oregon Grape for now from the local native plant sale. That's about all the cedars we can fit in until we clear more uphill (and all the Tubex tree tubes I can afford). We'll put more in next year and keep working our way uphill. The Oregon Grape we're putting along the property line up the hill. Hopefully it will eventually block out the view of the neighbors driveway and parking pad so they're not looking in the back of the house.

I'm still tempted to head out to the King County sale to pick up sword fern, which works really well here. The local sale only has shrubs and trees.

As for island living, I'm personally in love with "the moat" as the locals call it. Keeps out the riffraff. ;) Living here would be much less convenient if we commuted, but we both work from home, so it suits us perfectly. We end up over on the mainland every week or two for some appointment or another, which keeps us from getting cabin fever.